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TWeb had an OS update go bad and had to be restored to a previous state. We've lost two days worth of posts so you all get a do-over.

This is the third time I've mentioned this study. Is there a reason you keep ignoring it?

Also, do you work for Allsides.com or something? By my count, this is now the 9th time you've mentioned them.

No - I mention them because I like the way they present all points of view - rather than just one side. I've found them to be a valuable resource.

Your study not so much. Have you read the thing? Their weighting is in comparison with Congress (as I understand it). The 108th Congress in 2003 was Republican. Of COURSE the media would look "left" compared to that particular Congress. It's also an interesting methodology. They essentially counted the specific think tanks referenced in news stories, and used that as a measure of the leaning of the press. AND it's 14 years old. Politics have changed a lot since then.

Furthermore - this does not appear to be a published, peer-reviewed study. Why has tha not happened in 14 years?

No - I mention them because I like the way they present all points of view - rather than just one side. I've found them to be a valuable resource.

Yes, but you've told us that nine times now. I think we've got the message.

Originally Posted by carpedm9587

Your study not so much. Have you read the thing? Their weighting is in comparison with Congress (as I understand it). The 108th Congress in 2003 was Republican. Of COURSE the media would look "left" compared to that particular Congress. It's also an interesting methodology. They essentially counted the specific think tanks referenced in news stories, and used that as a measure of the leaning of the press. AND it's 14 years old. Politics have changed a lot since then.

Trump certainly deserves some negative coverage, but that doesn't mean that the negative coverage can't be biased--and it is. You need only look at Trump's visit to South Korea for that. After the media kept pounding him over and over on supposedly being too aggressive in policy towards North Korea, he actually tones down his rhetoric considerably in his speech there... so what do they do? Do they give him praise for backing off? No, that's ignored and instead you get to see bashing him for largely meaningless things like namedropping his products or in some cases just plain misrepresenting things (e.g. much was made of Trump overfeeding koi fish when he actually did the exact same thing that the Korean before him did). There was actually this great article I read about that trip showing all of the media bias in which they'd pick up on silly things just so they'd have things to criticize--and no, this wasn't even a pro-Trump article, it highlighted things that could have easily been valid targets for criticisms, but didn't sound as negative so they were skipped over. Wish I had saved the link, it was pretty interesting.

The KOI thing I have to agree was a serious problem. The reporting completely ignored that he did exactly what the host did before him, as you noted. The rest I cannot speak to as I was incommunicado for most of that trip and not following the news stories.

In general however, my experience of the MSM is that they call out the BS that keeps spewing from the White House, Ms. Huckabee-Sanders, and Ms. Conway. They just do not let them get away with the ridiculous spin they bring to pretty much everything that happens. I don't see that as "left leaning" - I see that as holding government accountable. When you get reports from Fox and Brietbart - the softballs they toss, and the fawning they engage in is pretty pathetic, IMO.

Originally Posted by Terraceth

Breitbart and Fox News aren't far right. They're extremely biased in their reporting (no more so, though, than MSNBC, and possibly less at this point), but that doesn't make them far right. People really need to stop tossing out that term to describe things that it isn't, and this applies to "far left" as well. It mostly seems to just serve as a way to try to discredit a source. Having a bias, even a strong one, towards the right or the left doesn't make you far right or far left, it's actually going that far on the political spectrum that does.

You know, in general, I agree about Fox. In fact, I'll go further. If you narrow in on the actual news programs, I find all of them to be fairly balanced. Fox News is slightly right of center, and most MSM is slightly left. When you zero in on the commentary segments, both sets get further right and left, respectively.

I stand by Brietbart being "far-right" however. I quick look at their news AND opinion site shows them to be exactly what they profess to be - the voice of the alt-right. Many of their articles are extreme, and and their opinion pieces even more so. They intentionally pull language out of pieces, publish misleading comments and titles, and misrepresent the sources they use. They are so bad I have simply stopped reading them. It's pointless. Their content is a step above the National Enquirer, IMO.

Originally Posted by Terraceth

I would agree there is no "explicit agenda" in the mainstream media but we need to remember that the mainstream media is a lot of different sources. For there to be an explicit agenda, there would need to be some kind of shadow organization controlling all of it--and I'm not paranoid enough to believe that. However, many of the individual sources in the mainstream media have agendas, or at least biases, and that affects it all as a whole. And in some ways, even if a source's bias isn't as big, it's worse than something like Breitbart because at least Breitbart is so blatant with their bias it's obvious it's a conservative talking point site, whereas some of the liberally biased sources demonstrate their bias by doing more subtle things like ignoring news stories inconvenient to the liberal narrative (a bias achieved through lack of reporting is harder to detect than a bias achieved by the reporting itself being biased).

Hmm... I'd need to see some numbers around the latter. That is not my experience of the MSM, and we're kind of back into anecdotes.

Not sure how that happened. I told you were it was at in the other thread. In post #77 I told you about the link in post #57 in your Assessment of Mr. Trump thread.

I missed it, Adrift. I hop all around the threads and am in several conversations. (Edited to add: I just went back to post #57, and now I see why I missed it. You linked "its a fact" and I simply missed the fact that it was linked. My apologies)

Here's an idea, why not put it in your signature so that it'll show up in all your posts, that way it'll save you time typing it.

The emojis weren't intended to be an argument. They were intended to voice my resignation at your handwaving, which I had anticipated.

Handwaving? Adrift, I provided a theme for the thread, and asked for data and studies. To your credit, you're the only one to provide one. But the study you provided is over a decade old, and the methodology it outlines, as far as I can tell, has the flaws I pointed out. How is that "handwaving?" What the heck IS "handwaving" anyway?